About
I’m a mother of 3 boys, ages 5, 10 and 13, who all attend a small progressive private school. So, now they’re 8, 13 and 16. The younger two are still at the small progressive private school, but the oldest is now a Junior at our local public high school, and that has been working out well for him.
I have a math/computer bachelor’s degree and an EECS master’s degree. I work from home as a computer scientist. I also volunteer a few hours a week in my children’s school to help out with their math program. I teach mathematical problem solving to children from 5 to 14 years old, and I coach interested older children who participate in Mathematical Olympiads for Elementary and Middle School Students, and MathCounts for Middle School students. I don’t have any formal teacher training, but I’ve been doing this for some years now and I’m getting pretty good at it. 🙂
I’m here to ramble about my experiences in this role as “math mom”.
Ramblings of a Math Mom 
Hi Math Mom. Would you like to submit a post for this week’s Carnival of Mathematics?
Yikes! thank you for that heads-up on my post! I guess all my proof reading went into grammar and punctuation. And thank you for stopping by. I’m fixing that immediately.
Hi again. I do the pentominoes with 6th-8th graders (when, as you say, I have the time, which I don’t anymore). I figure 5th graders would be able to do it with no problem mathematically. But I have noticed that fifth graders take much longer cutting (and, of course, thinking). So I would allot more time for them. Now I would have to do it after school in a math club or intervention program (we have the intervention and I’m trying to overcome the roadblocks to a math club).
Hello Mathmom,
I would like to write to you about myself. What would your email address?
Sincerely,
Shelly.
Do you use MathType in the creation of your teaching material or as a computer scientist?
Lary, I don’t use MathType. I use either LaTeX or the equation editor on Microsoft Word when I need to render mathematics.
Hi Math Mom, I’m browsing the internet looking for math teachers or homeschooling parents who have some experience with math curriculum in elementary schools. I’d consider you a professional on the subject and would love for you and your readers to take a peek at my current project. I’ve finished writing worksheet makers for kindergarten-aged children and am about to start on grade 1 of elementary school, with the goal of creating supplementary materials for the whole curriculum. The url is mathworksheetwizard.com, and I would love for you to take a look and hear where I might be going wrong. All the best.
Hi Nick. Your worksheets still do not display/print properly from the SeaMonkey browser. The look ok in IE.
Thank you! I’ve gone through all the wizards and made changes, so (fingers crossed) they should work for SeaMonkey now. Thanks for the heads up.
Yup, they look right now! I like your worksheets; they’re very attractive. I don’t use basic skills worksheets when I teach, since I’m not the one in charge of the basics, but rather the mathematical thinking/problem solving side of things, but I think others will find them useful.
Hi MathMom!
I have a question… my daughter gets number triangles for math warm-up. E.g. Use each number only one time (1-9) and the sum of the numbers along each side of the triangle must equal 20.
She’s been doing them by trial and error, but that takes quite a long time the more complicated they get. Is there a formula or method that she’s missing?
Thank you for any help you can give her!
Danielle
Danielle, I tried to answer your question here. Hope that helps somewhat!
That will definitely help. Thanks so much!
Danielle
I was wondering if you ever review any products? We have several math DVD programs that I would love to get your opinion on them. Just let me know at cindy@rocknlearn.com.
Thanks for your time,
Cindy
I wasn’t sure where to leave this comment since it wasn’t completely content-specific; I hope this isn’t too much of an intrusion.
I just want to share my puzzle website with you, http://www.webkendoku.com.
It is a place where you can play online KenKen games. According to Wikipedia, KenKen is logic and math puzzle developed by a Japanese mathematics teacher Tetsuya Miyamoto for the classroom.
Also, other math teachers have found it useful with their students.
Thank you for your time and again I hope this was not too much of an intrusion.
Cheers.
Hi “MathMom” 🙂 Like your blog a lot and have added it to my blogroll…hope that’s ok.
I just stumbled across you “Pairing up with Gauss” posting when I was searching the web for lessons on exactly that! Like you, I volunteer at my daughter’s school, working with high achieving math students. This year I’ve got 6 fourth grade groups. Thanks so much for sharing your lesson and experiences. I look forward to exploring your blog more in the future.
Hi Tammy, and welcome! I hope you find other interesting and helpful posts on my blog. You might like to try this sometime with your 4th graders — that turned out to be one of my favorite activities with that age group. Will you be blogging or sharing your experiences as well?
If you wrote an article about life we’d all reach enlightenment.
Here is a little video that my brother, a cousin, and I made with the help of 30 of my high school math students. We built a 64 foot Sierpinski triangle out of about 12000 tortilla chips and then made a humorous and exciting commercial for Doritos to be entered in a contest. While it didn’t win, I was quite happy with the result and having my students learn some more about fractals. Please check out the video and the project page showing some of the making of. Please feel free to post on your blog if you think it’s worthy.
http://www.blownapartstudios.com/
Thanks,
Cory Poole
Please consider adding our website to your math link page.
Mathmaster.org is a free resource for teachers and parents. You can make an unlimited number of printable math worksheets for children, for the classroom or for homework practice. What makes this site unique is that the level of control and flexibility when you generate unlimited worksheets.
Thank you,
John
Hi Math Mom,
I’m a math professor at Brown University, and also sort of a math dad. (I teach an enrichment class once
per week at my 12-year-old daughter’s middle school.) I recently wrote a children’s picture book about prime
numbers and factoring. I came across your neat blog and I thought that you and/or your readers might
be interested in the book. It is called “You can count on monsters”, and is due to be published (by
A.K. Peters) on March 1. In case you are interested, my website http://www.richardevanschwartz.com
has information about the book.
Best,
Rich Schwartz
Rich,
I was familiar with your poster, and the book looks like a lot of fun. Do you have review copies you can send out? I’d be happy to review it for my blog. It looks like it encourages just the sort of deep understanding of number that I think is so important for kids to get a grip on. If you are able to send me a copy and I like it, after I review it I would donate it to my kids’ school.
Mathmom
Hi mathmom,
I’d be thrilled if you reviewed the book for your blog, and I’ll ask the
marketing department if they can send you a review copy. Meanwhile,
can you email me your (surface) contact information?
Best,
Rich
Hi there!
I just ran across your blog, which I think is wonderful! Congrats to you for creating an environment where learning is fun, and where being a mom and a math lover is cool.
I’m part of the team at educationalrap.com, and wanted to drop you a quick line to see if you might be interested in taking a look at and possibly blogging about our website? We produce educational rap and hip hop that fosters a creative and new approach to learning. Right now, we’re focusing on Pi Day, which you may know is coming up on March 14th. We have a Pi-Day Collection that you can read about and listen to here:
http://www.educationalrap.com/music/pi-day
I’m going to be posting a link on our blog later to some great math blogs in celebration of Pi Day, and I’d love to link to you if that’s ok?
Just wanted to reach out, say hello, and introduce ourselves to you. Many thanks, and Happy Pi Day!
Cheers,
Taunia / Rhythm, Rhyme, Results
617.674.7524 office
http://www.educationalrap.com
Cambridge | Brooklyn | Palo Alto
Hi Taunia,
You’re welcome to link to my blog if you’d like. I have a couple of Pi Day posts:
Elementary Level Pi Day Ideas and Pi Day Post on Irrational Numbers
I’ll take a look at your music when I get a chance.
Dear Math Mom,
I’m studying digital media in education here in Stockholm at the Medieinsitutet.
I currently have a project in which I am collecting websites with Math content which I then am supposed to recommend to high school teachers here in Sweden. I think your blog is a good site to recommend and I would appreciate it if you could supply me with your name since I could not find it in your blog. I could at least find info about your background which I need for the short description of your website.
I hope you can supply me with this information.
Thanks in advance and great job with all your work within Math!
Respectfully,
Anna Öberg
Medieinstitutet
Tulegatan 41
Stockholm
Hej Anna,
Thanks for thinking of recommending my blog.
I don’t use my real name anywhere on this blog, because I talk about other people’s children, and I don’t want them to be identifiable. I don’t know if it would be ok to just identify me as “Mathmom” for your project.
Good luck with your project! If you haven’t already added Math Notations to your list, it’s a great one for High School teachers. Check my blogroll for other ideas. Math Teacher Mambo and Continuities are both excellent blogs written by high school math teachers.
Hi Math Mom! Are you the same Math Mom from Massachusetts?
No, I am not in Massachusetts.
We’ve developed a wooden math-related game called Kuutigo. If you have time, check our website for more information. And please contact me if you have any questions about the game.
Get Schooled is looking for incredible math teachers and students deserving of recognition. We want to send two outstanding examples of achievement in math education to New York City to ring the New York Stock Exchange bell. The deadline to apply or nominate someone is this Wednesday 4/16/2010. Submissions are simple 250 word write ups!!
See the Get Schooled site for full details: http://www.getschooled.com/ring-the-bell-contest
I thought you might enjoy our math worksheets. We have about 2,000 free math worksheets. Thought it might be worth a look for you.
Would love to get your thoughts on tenmarks.com …..
Hermedia, I don’t typically review pay-to-use websites.
Hey mathmom!
I’m working to spread awareness about KenKen, a new math game involving logic and arithmetic. It is similar to Sudoku, but since arithmetic is involved, it has tons of benefits to students (and anyone else) who plays it.
Obviously you cant blog about everything, but if you would like some more information about kenken I can provide you with whatever you may want.
Keep it up!
Hi, I love your site. I never really loved math. But I wrote a series of math books anyway 🙂 I don’t have a pay site, but a free site with activities and 5 simple books with characters and rhyme to help very young children with math concepts. do you review books?
Thanks,
Kim
Hi, MathMom!
Would it be possible to send you a review copy of the Little Algebra Book? It’s a short introduction to basic algebra for 11-14 year olds, using fold-out pages and beautiful illustrations to show how you keep an equation balanced.
Please email me and I’ll send you a PDF straight away.
Best wishes,
Colin
Hi,
you have written very interesting posts (this blog has given my plenty to read during the summer holidays). One thing though: I couldn’t find a link to your RSS feed. Since your blog is hosted by wordpress it has a feed at mathmomblog.wordpress.com/feed but either I’m making a fool of myself and couldn’t find the link (which wouldn’t surprise me) or there isn’t one in which case it might make it easier for your readers if you created one (if you want to).
good wishes,
Dave
Hi David,
Thanks for your kind comment! I thought that I had RSS links, but it appears that you were right and they were missing. Thanks to your comment this is now remedied and there are new links at the top of the right-hand sidebar.
MathMom
Its ok,
I’ve added this blog to my “blogroll” – if thats okay with you
David, that’s absolutely ok with me, and thanks again. MathMom
Hi,
We think your website is a great website for our users, which are mostly math teachers, parents, and students. Please let us know if we can link your site.
Our website, Davitily Math Problem Generator is a web-based math problem generator for Basic Math, Algebra, Geometry, and Algebra 2. Teachers, students, and parents can quickly and easily generate worksheets and tests with options for multiple choice, online test-taking, and many other important features.
http://www.mathproblemgenerator.com
If possible, but not necessary, a link to our site on yours would be appreciated.
Best,
David Pardue
info@davitily.com
Hi!
I have found your site to be very interesting and informative! I have a few articles related to early childhood education that I think you and your followers would enjoy reading. If you are interested please let me know and I can send them along for you to review!
Thank you in advance for your time,
Emily
Hello,
I attended a math conference in SF in March and met a math consultant. He mentioned a site that helps parents help their kids in math. He mentioned MECC. I have found a couple of references and a pdf but not a site. Do you know anything or heard antything about this?
Thank you
Hi Math Mom!
We’d be happy to have your thoughts on a new education motion gaming console which turns PCs into a gaming console. We designed a number of educational activities: math, spelling, recycling etc. btw, usually for pre-school age… 🙂
The software can be downloaded: http://goo.gl/dg2xm or used online: http://goo.gl/xbEWr
What do you think?
Thx!
Cam-Trax
I would like suggest you to explore the graphic calculator world at my site:
http://www.casiopeia.net/
nowadays calculators can be “mini computers”, with apps, games, etc,
if you like my website (or any blogger visitor), can request for blogroll partnership/link exchange
best regards
Hi there,
My name is Liz. I am a blogger at thefactortree.com – an adaptive/interactive online math learning curriculum. We focus on students from the pre-k to the 6th grade. I apologize for posting the info on here but I was unable to find the contact information for you.
I just came across your blog and thought you have some great content on here, so I wanted to reach out to you and see if you would be interested in checking out our site and providing us with some feedback? We’ve added new features, new blog content are currently working on revamping our site – the new version should be out by the end of the month. If you like our service (which is currently free to use- but not for long), would you be willing to write about it? Please let me know as that would be incredibly helpful for us. We are always looking to partner with other education online sources so we would very much appreciate your feedback – you also wrote about Educator.com. I hope to hear from you.
Regardless, thanks for writing and enjoy your day.
Thank you, Liz
We hope you check out our Facebook.com/FactorTree and Twitter.com/FactorTree pages to get to know us better. 😉
Hi there,
Just checking in with you after the storm, not sure if you got hit by Sandy or not, but I hope all is well. -Liz
Hi, Math Mom,
I came across your blog via David Wees, and as a fellow mathematics educator (especially that your target age group is 5 to 14 year-olds), I thought you might be able to help in spreading the word about an educational TV show for preteens about math that we’re putting together. “The Number Hunter” is a cross between Bill Nye The Science Guy and The Crocodile Hunter — bringing math to children in an innovative, adventurous way. I’d really appreciate your help in getting the word out about the project.
I studied math education at Jacksonville University and the University of Florida. It became clear to me during my studies why we’re failing at teaching kids math. We’re teaching it all wrong! Bill Nye taught kids that science is FUN. He showed them the EXPLOSIONS first and then the kids went to school to learn WHY things exploded. Kids learn about dinosaurs and amoeba and weird ocean life to make them go “wow”. But what about math? You probably remember the dreaded worksheets. Ugh.
I’m sure you know math is much more exciting than people think. Fractal Geometry was used to create “Star Wars” backdrops, binary code was invented in Africa, The Great Pyramids and The Mona Lisa, wouldn’t exist without geometry.
Our concept is to create an exciting, web-based TV show that’s both fun and educational.
If you could consider posting about the project on your blog, I’d very much appreciate it. Also, if you’d be interested in link exchanging (either on The Number Hunter site, which is in development, or on StatisticsHowTo.com which is a well-established site with 300,000 page views a month) please shoot me an email. We’re also always looking for input and ideas from other math educators!
Thanks in advance for your help,
Stephanie
andalepublishing@gmail.com
http://www.thenumberhunter.com
http://www.statisticshowto.com
Hi there –
My name is Paige and I am a elementary school teacher and co-founder of a new company, Moms Love Math.
Moms Love Math is a tool to help parents understand their child’s math
curriculum so they can assist with homework and build math confidence.
Research shows that student success in math is correlated to their
parents’ level of confidence in math. Created by teachers for parents,
Moms Love Math uses videos to teach parents the math concepts that are
important their child’s curriculum. Parents can preview the Moms Love
Math videos before their child begins studying a topic, or they can
use the videos as a guide when their children are stuck on a homework
problem.
Our videos are:
Common Core aligned
Based on real classroom curriculums
Designed by teachers for parents
We would love the feedback of you and your readers on our product. We can be found at momslovemath.com.
Please let us know what you think!